TSV Archives (from February 2023)
From November 23, 2022, to February 15, 2023, Trinity Square Video presented Future Living Room, an evocative vitrine installation and video performance by ecology-focused artist and choreographer sarah koekkoek. This immersive work explored the intersections of domesticity, ecology, and the cyclical nature of human existence within an exploited natural world.
The vitrine featured crocheted fibers intertwined with wild plant life, framing a video of koekkoek and collaborator Mary Dyja. Their synchronized, repetitive gestures created a meditative rhythm, reflecting on cycles of connection and disconnection. Using crocheting techniques, the performers wove intricate forms, paying homage to ancestral practices.
The installation blurred boundaries between the natural and constructed, presence and absence. Overlaying footage of hands engaging with materials deepened this reflection, prompting questions about the future of suburban living spaces and our fractured relationship with nature.
Future Living Room was a meditation on connectivity, cyclicality, and ecological consciousness, enriched by contributions from Jordanna Masi (plants) and Bryce Zimmerman (cinematography).
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sarah koekkoek is an ecology focused multidisciplinary artist working with movement, dance, flora and biomaterials from Tkarón:to (Toronto). Now based in London, England where she is a MFA student at Goldsmiths University in the Art & Ecology program. Her research examines movement as a language that can help cultivate greater understanding and compassion with our relationship to self, others and the earth. Often, her movements are generated by nurturing the reciprocal relationships of human-human and human-nonhuman through embodied offerings such as dance, text and flora collaborations. Since 2017 sarah’s work has been exploring our punctured relationship and existence within the abused and exploited natural world, developing an environment of (physical) emotions surrounding climate change and the anthropocene.
sarah acknowledges that at the core of this practice is the recognition that she is an uninvited guest on the territory lands of the Wendat, The Haudenosaunee and The Mississaugas of The Credit First Nations. This informs how she moves through the creation process as well as daily life. It is imperative that we do all we can to be respectful to indigenous communities, uphold treaties and remain open to learning and evolving together.
Founded in 1971, it is one of Canada’s first artist-run centres and its oldest media arts centre. We are a not-for-profit, charitable organization.
For 50 years, Trinity Square has been a champion of media arts practices. Our activities are guided by a goal to increase our members’ and audiences’ understanding and imagination of what media arts practices can be. Trinity Square strives to create supportive environments, encouraging artistic and curatorial experimentation that challenge medium specificity through education, production and presentation supports.
As video-based practices have become increasingly present across disciplines, Trinity Square engages artists and curators in critical investigations into the changing conditions of perception, materiality and the virtual. We consider all of our artistic activities and structures through a process of critical self-reflection, continuously evaluating the ethical positioning of our programming, jury structures, inter-organizational relationships, et cetera. In addition to holding aesthetic worth in its own right, our artistic programming extends our education and production activities in order to generate new knowledges.
Trinity Square’s programming is guided by three priorities: 1) promoting an expanded definition of media arts; 2) promoting the meaningful engagement of diverse voices in all levels of our operations; and 3) supporting and nurturing the production of new works by artists and curators. Our membership represents the diversity of the city and honours the original mandate of the organization—seeking to reduce barriers to access related to race, gender, sexual orientation, and socio- economic and physical ability.
